Fake champion
Nancy Kelley says look look it’s all been proven look for yourself.
So I’m reading. First item: the title, subtitle, and first sentence all carefully obfuscate the issue in the way the obedient media outlets always do.
Title: Critics accuse trans swimming star
But the issue isn’t “trans” it’s man. He has an unfair advantage because he’s a man competing against women.
Subhead: The NCAA champion has sparked controversy and become a hate figure among conservatives, but statistics show little evidence that she performed any differently to other women, Io Dodds reports
That one’s a whole list of obfuscations. He became a “champion” by competing against women. He didn’t randomly become “a hate figure”: he cheated women out of their chances to be champions. We’re very far from all conservatives – most of us are fiercely feminist. “She” is a he. Women aren’t “other women” in relation to him, because he’s not a woman. Io Dodds is a trans woman, i.e. a man. He “came out” as a transwoman in June last year.
First sentence: In 17 March, Lia Thomas became the first openly transgender athlete to win America’s top trophy in university sports when she swam to victory in the women’s 500 yard (457 meter) freestyle race. Yet again the sly “transgender athlete.” The point is that he’s a trans woman i.e. a man. He has the body of a man.
Now for the rest of the article.
Her right to compete in women’s races, and sometimes her gender itself, has been attacked by sports stars, politicians, activists, her competitors, and even some of her teammates’ parents, as well as protesters at the NCAA championship last week, who argued that her time living as a man gives her an unfair advantage.
No, not his “time living as a man” ffs, his male body.
After that it’s a few thousand words of strenuous special pleading which seems to boil down to “she didn’t get the highest score ever therefore it was totally fair.”
I think that these people — if not the writers, then their audience — really believe that there’s something called a “trans woman”, whose body may somehow resemble a man’s body in certain ways (perhaps some kind of disorder of sexual development), but who is very obviously a woman.
They wouldn’t consider it fair for a man to compete in a women’s competition; of course that would be unfair. But the consumers of this stuff really don’t understand that a trans woman is simply a man (or, if you prefer, “a kind of a man”, just as a man with brown hair or a man that votes for Jill Stein is “a kind of a man”); and if we try to make people aware of that fact, the producers of this stuff threaten us (well, not so much me, more the women among us) with death and rape.
The “that’s not 100%, so it doesn’t count” argument seems common for the movement. It’s such a sophomoric bit of rhetoric that I honestly feel some fremdschamen whenever encountering it. It’s consistent with the ideology’s religious character, though, as well as the maladaptive thinking typical of anxiety disorders and abuse victims.
Well, yes, that’s what they’ve been told and what they’ve uncritically accepted. We know they didn’t evaluate the proposition even momentarily, because it falls apart with even the gentlest pressure. Of course, that fragility is per se why questions are met neither with argument nor evidence, but instead with cries of violence and accusations of hatred. It’s a deflection, a shift from a disadvantageous battlefield to one where they set the terms of battle. I think Sun Tzu might have said something about whether to let the enemy do that or not, but …
Nullius @ 2
Re the “it’s not 100%” argument, yep, very common. “This way of identifying women doesn’t cover 100% of women, therefore we must discard it” is particularly annoying.
Re the OP, “The point is that he’s a trans woman i.e. a man. He has the body of a man”:
I do wish they’d see this. If there is value in having sports specifically for people called “women”, then why in the world would it be based on identity? Why can Lia Thomas compete in that division but Will Thomas cannot? Is the purpose of women’s sports now primarily to provide a venue where men can be affirmed as women, in glorious fashion? The edifice crumbles once they acknowledge that sex cannot be changed.
The problem with the “data” about his performances is that Thomas manufactured all that data himself and may have intentionally lost races and gone slower in other races in order to produce a set of results that would benefit his narrative. He wins races when he wants to and then dogs it in other races so he and transgender activists can say he doesn’t win and set records every time he gets in the water so, totally fair!
I’ve always considered a “good faith argument “ to be one where, if you were proven wrong, you would admit defeat. If the data were to show that Lia outrageously crushed all the “other” women swimmers at every single opportunity, neither the author of this article, Kelley, nor the vast majority of Genderists would admit there’s a problem. They’d celebrate this barrier-destroying Trans WOMAN!
They are not acting in good faith. They’re manipulating the rubes.
June this year might be a good time for me to ‘come out’ as a transgiraffe. Like everything else, it has its arguments for and against, but it’s worth considering.
Oh no, suddenly I have a sinking feeling that you’re the sort of person that would use ‘weltanschauung’ unironically :(
No no no, the sort of person who would use “schadenfreude,” which is a perfectly cromulent word and very useful, no irony needed.
He has a septum piercing.
I cannot resist pointing out that “fremdschamen” is an English transliteration of the German verb “Fremdschämen”. The noun is “Fremdscham”, and so should be transliterated directly as “fremdscham”, respecting the English rules of orthography.
Und Weltanschauung ist ein bloßes vernünftiges Wort, wisst ihr?
Ah, but can you explain ‘numberwang’?
@bascule #12 – I am sure that Olivia Colman would love to hear any explanation!
@10 I never understood why anyone would put something there, which must feel like you have a big booger to pick constantly, only to have some metal thing in the way of picking it.
It does make his upper torso look smaller though… :P
#11 Durchanwanderer
In Deutsche? ¡No hay problema! But in English…
[…] We’ve met him once before, a few months ago, when he wrote another piece for the Indy, this one explaining why it’s perfectly fine for Lia Thomas to cheat women out of prizes. […]